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THE FAMILIAR HALE 



AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW BY WHAT STANDARDS 
OF AGE, APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER THE 
PROPOSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE FOR THE 
CAMPUS OF YALE COLLEGE SHOULD BE JUDGED 




BY 



GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR 



THE FAMILIAR HALE 

AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW BY WHAT STANDARDS 
OF AGE, APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER THE 
PROPOSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE FOR THE 
CAMPUS OF YALE COLLEGE SHOULD BE JUDGED 



BY 
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR 



The Yale Publishing Association, 
New Haven, Conn. 



(Reprinted, with some additions, from tlie Yale Altmni Weekly 
of April 3, 1907) 



en 




^^ PREFACE 

|N response to a request for a preface to the pro- 
posed reprint of "The Familiar Hale" there are 
a number of phases of the subject on which the 
writer would like to comment, but he thinks he 
cannot do better, within the limitations of a preface, than 
to confine himself to one point and call attention to what 
appears to be the earliest poem which was inspired by 
the capture and death of Nathan Hale. These verses by 
an unknown writer are, indeed, perhaps, the earliest post- 
humous reference to Hale in existence. It must have 
struck any student of the life of Hale that there are sin- 
gularly few references to his death by contemporaries. 
This poem was included in Frank Moore's "Songs and 
Ballads of the Revolution," in which it is credited to the 
year 1776, but no one, as far as I am aware, has made any 
serious effort to discover who wrote the poem, and when 
and where it first appeared. It is not unlikely that it 
formed an old broadside and that some collection of broad- 
sides may be found to contain it. Mr. Edmund Wetmore 
the President of the Sons of the Revolution, himself a 
lawyer of distinction and a close student of our Revolu- 
tionary history, ventures the suggestion that the poem 
may have unsuspected evidential value as bearing upon 
the manner of Hale's capture and death. If the poem was 
written as early as 1776, it is more than likely to have 
been based upon current accounts of which no record has 



4 The Familiar Hale. 

come down to us. I have long hoped that some graduate 
student of the University would take the matter up as a 
piece of graduate work and devote himself to "running 
down" this interesting poem. To discover the author of 
it would be a real achievement and might easily lead to 
the discovery of more knowledge than we now have of 
Hale. The poem, which has rarely appeared in print, is 
hereto appended. 

G. D. S. 

New Haven, May 17, 1911. 

CAPTURE AND DEATH OF NATHAN HALE. 

BY AN UNKNOWN POET OF 1776. 

The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines, 
A-saying "oh, hu-sh ! " a-saying "oh, hu-sh ! " 
As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, 
For Hale in the bush ; for Hale in the bush. 

"Keep still ! " said the thrush as she nestled her young, 
In a nest by the road ; in a nest b)'- the road ; 
' ' For the tyrants are near, and with them appear, 
What bodes us no good ; what bodes us no good. ' ' 

The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home. 
In a cot by the brook ; in a cot by the brook. 
With mother and sister and memories dear, 
He so gaily forsook ; he so gail}'- forsook. 

Cooling shades of the night were coming apace, 
The tattoo had beat ; the tattoo had beat. 
The noble one sprang from his dark hiding place, 
To make his retreat ; to make his retreat. 



The Familiar Hale. e 

He warily trod on the dry rustling leaves, 

As he pass'd thro' the wood ; as he pass'd thro' the wood ; 

And silently gain'd his rude launch on the shore, 

As she play'd with the flood ; as she play'd with the flood. 

The guard of the camp, on that dark, dreary night, 
Had a murderous will ; had a murderous will. 
They took him and bore him afar from the shore, 
To a hut on the hill ; to a hut on the hill. 



The brave fellow told them, no thing he restrained. 
The cruel gen'ral ; the cruel gen'ral ; 
His errand from camp, of the ends to be gained. 
And said that was all ; and said that was all. 

They took him and bound him and bore him away, 
Down the hill's grassy side ; down the hill's grassy side. 
'Twas there the base hirelings in royal array. 
His cause did deride ; his cause did deride. 

Five minutes were given, short moments, no more, 
For him to repent ; for him to repent ; 
He pray'd for his mother, he ask'd not another ; 
To Heaven he went ; to Heaven he went. 

The faith of a martyr, the tragedy shew'd, 
As he trod the last stage ; as he trod the last stage. 
And Britons will shudder at gallant Hale's blood. 
As his words do presage ; as his words do presage. 

"Thou pale king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, 
Go frighten the slave ; go frighten the slave ; 
Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe. 
No fears for the brave ; no fears for the brave." 



The Familiar Hale. 



THE FAMILIAR HALE: AN ATTEMPT TO 
SHOW BY WHAT STANDARDS OF AGE, 
APPEARANCE, AND CHARACTER THE PRO- 
POSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE FOR 
THE CAMPUS OF YALE COLLEGE SHOULD 
BE JUDGED/ 

' ' Durable stone preserve the monumental record. Nathan 
Hale Esq. a Capt in the army of the United States, who was born 
June 6th 1755, and received the first honors of Yale College, Sept. 
1773, resigned his life a sacrifice to his countrj-'s liberty at New 
York, Sept 22d, 1776, Etatis 22d. (Headstone in the graveyard 
at Coventry, Tolland County, Connecticut.) 

There is no existing portrait of Nathan Hale. In 
Stuart's ''Life," published in 1856, there is a reference to 
a miniature whicli had then disappeared, and which must 
now be regarded as irretrievably^ lost. We know, how- 
ever, that Hale was above medium height, w^ell built, and 
of fair coloring. He excelled in contests of running, 
leaping, \vrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, and 
playing ball ; he w-as fond of hunting and fishing ; he w^as 
clever with his hands ; it is recorded b}^ Stuart that he 
once said in jest that he "could do anything but spin." 

Such accounts as we have of Hale bring before us a 
handsome, frank and lively fellow of winning naturalness. 
He belonged to the epic Age of Homespun ; he came from 

' First printed.— The Yale Ahimni Weekly, April 5, 1907, and the New 
York Evening Post, April 29, 1907. 



The Familiar Hale. 7 

sturdy stock ; he was country bred ; there is no reason 
for believing that he was in any way different in appear- 
ance or breeding from the average country boy brought 
up on a farm by God-fearing, hard-working parents. He 
was a good scholar, but he found time for the full enjoy- 
ment of student life. Of his great popularity with his 
classmates there is abundant evidence. His modesty and 
manliness, his scholarship and his attractive personality, 
won friends for him just as they win friends to-day. Any 
student who will look up Hale's record can understand 
him as well as could one of his own classmates. 

After Hale left college and before he entered the army, 
he taught school in Kast Haddam and in New London. 
These experiences as a schoolmaster could not have 
changed him. His army life was too brief to have made 
a typical soldier of him, though his enjoyment of the 
social side of camp life is undisguised. His genial nature 
must have made him as great a favorite with his fellow- 
of&cers and soldiers as he had been in college with his 
tutors and fellow students. 

But the roughness of camp life can have had no attrac- 
tion for him ; neither did he ever mix with the world 
enough to acquire the polish of a courtier. Generous of 
impulse, modest and unassuming, he had natural good 
manners rather than finished ease. His bringing up was 
homely — in the best sense. Gallant he undoubtedly was, 
but we should not think of applying that word to him. 
The tributes paid to him after his untimely fate breathe a 
different feeling. They point to a serious boy-nature 
which glows back of the stilted language of that day. 



8 The Familiar Hale. 

A poem first published in the February number of the 
"American Historical Magazine" of 1836, but "wrote 
soon after Hale's death " by a friend and companion of 
Hale during his student days at New Haven, gives proba- 
bly the best picture that we have of Hale, though it par- 
takes of the extravagance of the elegiac poetry of the 
period. 

" Erect and tall, his well-proportioned frame, 
Vigorous and active, as electric flame ; 
His manly limbs had symmetry and grace, 
And innate goodness marked his beauteous face ; 
His fancy lively, and his genius great, 
His solid judgment shone in grave debate ; 
For erudition far beyond his years ; 
At Yale distinguished above all his peers ; 
Speak, ye who knew him while a pupil there, 
His numerous virtues to the world declare ; 
His blameless carriage and his modest air, 
Above the vain parade and idle show 
Which mark the coxcomb and the empty beau ; 
Removed from envy, malice, pride, and strife. 
He walked through goodness as he walked through life ; 
A kinder brother nature never knew, 
A child more duteous or a friend more true." 

There was, unhappily, no poet of Hale's time qualified 
by temperament and genius to fitly eulogize "the Lycidas 
of our historic dead," as Richard D. Hubbard characterized 
Hale in his oration at Hartford in 1883. 

Hale's tutor, Timothy Dwight the elder, eulogized him 
in the same high strain in his epic, "The Conquest of 
Canaan," first published in 1795. 



The Familiar Hale. 9 

" Thus, while fond virtue wished in vain to save, 
Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave, 
With genius' living flame his bosom glowed. 
And Science lured him to her sweet abode ; 
In World's fair path his feet adventured far, 
The pride of Peace, the rising hope of War ; 
In duty firm, in danger calm as even — 
To friends unchanging and sincere to Heaven, 
How short his course, the prize how early won, 
While weeping Friendship mourns her favorite gone." 

In tlie fading minutes (preserved in the college library) 
of tlie Linonian Society, which was one of the great college 
institutions of Hale's time, it is recorded that at the anni- 
versary exercises in 1773, the play given was "The Beaux' 
Stratagem" with Nathan Hale and James Hillhouse in 
the cast. After the play, as the scribe is careful to record, 
'Ve were very well entertained with a supper." 

The candles that lit that little supper after the play 
were extinguished nearly one hundred and forty years 
ago, and yet a faint light still streams through the door 
left half open for us by the youthful scribe and we get just 
a glimpse of the gay young performers, and among them 
Hale and Hillhouse. Both were young men of high ideals 
and enthusiasm, and it is pleasant to know that they were 
classmates and friends. Both were destined for high 
things : Hale was soon to make the supreme sacrifice of 
his life for his country ; Hillhouse consecrated a life of 
unparalleled activity and devotion to the public good. 
Hillhouse has no memorial in the city he served so well 
and so beautifully adorned with elms, and Hale still waits 
a memorial at Yale. 



lo The Familiar Hale. 

Fortunately we can get nearer to Hale than through 
any contemporary account of him. His clumsy camp 
basket and powderhorn, and, above all, his letters and the 
soldier's diary that he kept during the last few months of 
his life, show what manner of man he was. His letters 
reveal a nature so generous and affectionate that one feels 
his tragic fate with a poignant sense of personal loss. In 
particular, his letters to his intimates, and theirs to him, 
show how whole-souled in friendship he must have been. 
The feeling is as fresh as though the letters were written 
yesterday. No one can read the faded pages of the diary 
without feeling that it brings us close to the real Hale — 
an everyday, wholesome, self -poised young man, deeply in 
earnest, mature in many ways, but still frankly boyish. 
We could not well spare the naive entry, ''Evening 
prayers omitted for wrestling." The wisdom of this pre- 
cautionary measure appears in an entry two days later — 
"grand Wrestle on Prospect Hill no wager laid." A few 
days later this entr}^ occurs — "Wednesday 8th. Cleaned 
my gun — pld. some football and some chequers." It is 
refreshing to find that Hale was not too nice to use the 
slang of the day. Winter Hill, we read, was "stumped" 
to wrestle Prospect Hill. In a letter written when teach- 
ing school at Hast Haddam to his friend and classmate, 
Mead, he says : "From what I can collect, I think prob- 
able you have had some hig-h doings this winter, but expect 
a more full account of these in your next." 

It is significant of his manly and cheerful temperament 
that despite the stress and fatigue of army life, despite the 
desperate situation of his country, despite his absence from 



The Familiar Hale. ii 

home, there is not a despondent line or reflection in his 
entire diary. Interesting and valuable as the diary is to 
the historical student, precious as every word of it is to 
every one of us as the personal record of Hale, it is not in 
anj^ way remarkable in cold type, but the impression pro- 
duced upon the reader by the original in the handwriting 
of Hale is incommunicable. 

What, then, must a statue to Nathan Hale express but 
these characteristics ? It should not represent him as a 
typical soldier or as a courtier, but as a student so young, 
handsome, straightforward, earnest and expressive of 
feature, as at once to win confidence just as he did long 
ago. Above all, a statue of Nathan Hale for the Campus^ 
should present him as young, fresh, unspoiled, country 
bred. It is the characteristic and bane of modern sculpture 
that it is too self-conscious, too posed as for its photograph. 
It is not to be supposed that when Hale stood on his 
scaffold in front of Artillery Park he posed himself for 
those who had to see him die, that he struck any theatrical 
attitudes or breathed any defiance or assumed any air of 

'Nathan Hale never heard the term "Campus" applied to the College 
Yard, as it was known until as late as the 70's. Harvard College seems almost 
alone in its retention of the good old term "yard," which has now been 
displaced throughout the entire country by the rather inappropriate term 
"campus." I submitted the manuscript of this article on Hale to the late 
Professor Thomas Day Seymour, who urged me to change the term "campus " 
to " yard " throughout the paper. I told him that as I was writing largely for 
the students of to-day, I felt that their term should be used, and also that I did 
not believe that any such thing as going back to the use of the term " yard " 
was possible, however much the purists might like it. For a discussion of 
this subject, see "The Use at American Colleges of the Word Campus," by 
Albert Matthews, Vol. 3 of the Publications of the Colonial Society of 
Massachusetts, pp. 431-437. 



12 The Familiar Hale. 

sullen indifference. I conceive that he did nothing out of 
character. 

Johnston's "Life," published in 1 891, shows that he was 
hanged not in City Hall Park, as is commonly supposed, 
but in front of "Artillery Park," which was in the neigh- 
borhood of First Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. Johnston 
sees no reason for supposing that there was anyone present 
beyond a few officers and artillerymen and some camp 
followers. 

I like to think that Hale went to his doom simply and 
quietly, thinking of the bright fields of his home in 
Coventry, of the "Old Brick Row" at New Haven, of his 
family and his friends ; that he bore himself calmly — a 
brave fellow about to die. I can imagine him unflinching 
without, but tremulous within — he w^as young, life was 
dear to him, the earth that he looked out upon was fair, 
friendship had been sweet to him, he did not want to die. 
It is inconceivable that he said his memorable last words — 
"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my 
country" — \vith an heroic pose. No manly fellow of his 
sort would do it to-day, nor would any young man, bred 
as Nathan Hale was, have done it one hundred and thirty 
odd years ago. 

The supreme achievement of the actor, in Mr. Goodwin's 
touching characterization of Nathan Hale in Clyde Fitch's 
play, was the simple and natural way in which Mr. Good- 
win gave the last words, unaccompanied by any sign of 
the actor's art. But the art was there, and it was perfect 
— the art of self-repression. Mr. Goodwin knew that 
anything that savored of acting would detract from the 



The Fainiliar Hale. 13 

touching solemnity of the scene — from the thrilling last 
words. 

It is clear that if he would succeed, the sculptor must 
approach his task in a spirit of complete understanding 
and sympathy and in his work be moved by a spirit as 
simple and pure as was the spirit of Hale. The statue 
must have the sincerity and nobility of a work of Greek 
sculpture if it is to reach the heart. The Hermes of 
Praxiteles, to refer to a familiar example, is as exquisite 
in naturalness and sweetness as it is perfect in execution. 
Hale's statue must have no sense of pose, no feeling of 
self-consciousness ; it must be simple, strong and natural. 
We may not be able to command for Nathan Hale a 
sculptor with the technical resources of Praxiteles, but we 
have a right to ask for a conception of equal sincerity and 
depth of feeling. The value of correct dress is overesti- 
mated. Sculpture is more than objective. Too much 
attention to dress distracts from the subjective thought to 
be expressed. The sculptor of to-day is tempted to render 
too minutely the ruffled shirt, the full skirted coat, and 
the breeches and hose of the Colonial gentleman. Hale 
would have been out of character in fine clothes. Why 
dress him up in them now and make a fine gentleman of 
him? 

Unless Hale's statue takes its place on Yale's old 
Campus as naturally as the students of to-day take their 
places there, it must be counted a failure. If it is a self- 
conscious work, posed, theatrical, it will remain a solitary 
figure on the Campus — a thing apart from life, so much 
inert bronze, an incumbrance. If it realizes Hale as he 



14 The Fainiliar Hale. 

was, Hale as he lives in History, Hale as he has been 
enshrined in the hearts of Yale men since he for all time 
typified the Yale ideal, the work must be so direct in its 
appeal, so familiar in its spirit, that the students of to-day, 
as they pass back and forth, will feel that he is one of 
them — one of them in every way, but happily removed 
from the tumult of life, from loss and stain, and forever 
bright. 

If Nathan Hale can thus be made to live again on the 
Campus in the sight of all Yale men, what an inspiration 
will be furnished them — a friend to test all actions by, 
a friend to leave with a sense of loss and to come back to 
with a renewing of the life of the heart. These are high 
standards, but can Yale accept for Nathan Hale — her own 
hero — anything but the highest ? Is there a place on the 
campus for any statue of him except one from the hand of 
a master-sculptor, working with hand, brain and heart to 
portray him as he was, as he lives in the pages of his 
diary and in his letters and in the words of those who 
knew him best ? 

That Hale should have been entrusted with a grave 
and perilous errand, and that he should have had a cap- 
tain's rank, shows how deeply his ability and the fine 
quality of his courage had impressed those about him. 
But those facts have led us to think of him as older than 
he was. It is hard to realize that, when Hale stood on the 
scaffold that Sunday morning, he was no older than the 
Junior of average age to-day. He died September 22, 
1776. His twenty-first birthday fell on the sixth of the 
previous June. 



The Familiar Hale. 15 

Undergraduates may well feel that Hale is one of them 
and claim him as a friend. His very youth brings him 
close to life on the Campus — lends brightness to his name, 
endears him to all who are quick to feel a modest and 
manly spirit. 

" To drum-beat and heart-beat, 
A soldier marches by ; 
There is color in his cheek, 
There is courage in his eye. 
Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat, 
In a moment he must die. 



From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, 

From monument and urn, 

The sad of earth, the glad of Heaven, 

His tragic fate shall learn ; 

And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, 

The name of HAI.E shall burn !" ' 



'The first and last stanzas of a poem entitled "Hale's Fate and Fame," 
written by the Hon. Francis Miles Finch, Yale 1846, for delivery at the cen- 
tennial anniversary in 1853 of the Linonian Society of which Hale was an active 
member, and which he served as Chancellor or President and as scribe. The 
minutes of this society in Hale's handwriting are among the most precious 
treasures of the University. 

Judge Finch's poem on Hale, though not equal in merit to his Civil War 
poem entitled, "The Blue and the Gray," struck a responsive cord, and 
through the medium of the old-fashioned school "Readers" of years ago, 
brought Hale's story before the school children of the entire country. I think 
it is not too much to say that this poem did more than anything else to keep 
Hale's memory fresh during the latter part of the last century. 

In this estimate of Judge Finch's poem on Hale, I am confirmed by the ven- 
erable Dr. Dwight, whose grandfather, the first President Dwight, was a college 



1 6 The Familiar Hale. 

tutor, as well as a friend and correspondent of Hale, and who paid Hale a 
touching tribute in his epic, entitled, "The Conquest of Canaan," which with 
5'outhful precocity he began at nineteen and finished at twenty-two. It is a 
curious fact that this poem, once so greatly admired, would now be all but for- 
gotten except for the ten lines which Dwight introduced, as a tribute to Hale, 
after he had finished the poem. 



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